We all have terrible ideas, but few of them change the whole course of history and end
in the deaths and misery of millions of people.
So no matter how bad your ideas are, don't worry, because you'll feel better once you
take a look at some of the worst ideas in history.
The disaster artist
20th century engineer Thomas Midgley was a very smart guy who put his mind to solving
some of the biggest practical problems of his time.
Unfortunately, his solutions had the unintended side effect of nearly destroying the entire
planet.
Midgley's first major scientific contribution was adding lead to gasoline in order to make
it more dependable for car engines.
It worked, but since lead is also toxic, it damaged the environment and caused widespread
health issues for decades, which shouldn't have been a surprise.
"As early as the year 100 BC, it was common knowledge in Ancient Rome that lead could
cause insanity and eventually incur death."
That was kid stuff, though, compared to Midgely's efforts to make refrigerators safer and less
explosive.
To do this, he headed up the team that invented the coolant Freon, which allowed fridges and
air conditioners to be mass produced more safely.
Freon was also the first mass market chlorofluorocarbon, and if that rings a bell, it's because Freon
and other CFCs are the primary cause of the destruction of the ozone layer.
By the time anybody figured this out, though, the damage was done, and the world's governments
have spent decades and untold trillions of dollars trying to fix the damage.
Thanks a lot, Midgley!
I am curious yellow
In 1863, German chemist Julius Wilbrand was working on some new chemicals when he invented
Trinitrotoluene, a simple yellow dye.
Almost thirty years later, though, another chemist discovered that Trinitrotoluene had
another interesting property besides making your pants look like bananas: under the right
conditions, it would totally explode.
Within a decade the German military was manufacturing new munitions filled with the substance, which
they gave the shorter nickname "TNT."
So the next time you fold your laundry, just do it very, very carefully.
Watership down
When the British decided to colonize Australia, they brought with them lots of iffy ideas,
like the movie Kangaroo Jack.
"And, I can sing!
I said a hip/hop/the hippy/ the hippy to the hip hip hop and you don't stop the rock/to
the bang bang boogie…"
But maybe the worst idea came courtesy of Thomas Austin.
Bored with the local hunting game, he decided to import two dozen rabbits so he could breed
them for live target practice.
One major problem, though: since rabbits aren't native to Australia, they have no natural
predators.
And considering rabbits are most famous for breeding very quickly, well, you can guess
what happened next.
Within seven years, Austin estimated he had killed more than 14,000 rabbits on his property
alone.
By 1940, there were an estimated 800 million rabbits in Australia, all descended from Austin's
original group.
And that was a massive disaster for the Australian ecosystem, with rabbits contributing to the
extinction of numerous plant and animal species.
Throughout the 20th century, the Australian government has embarked on extreme measures
to kill the rabbit population.
"Since the rabbit's public enemy number one Down Under, this time the farmers rejoiced
over a good day's work; a big harvest of rabbit skins."
Besides huge rabbit hunts, the government also released the deadly biotoxin myxomatosis
in 1950, and rabbit haemorrhagic disease in the 1990's.
But even though these diseases have ravaged the rabbit population, the bunnies continue
to thrive.
160 years after Austin's terrible idea, Australia is still trying to figure out a solution to
the rabbit plague.
Red sparrow
In the 1950s, the Chinese government concluded that one of their biggest problems was the
common sparrow, which ate grain from the farms.
Chinese scientists estimated that for every 1 million sparrows killed, there would be
enough surplus food for 60,000 people.
The course was clear: the sparrows had to go.
The government rallied the population to hunt down and kill every sparrow they could find,
leading to the elimination of hundreds of millions of birds.
However, it turned out that sparrows played a very important role in the Chinese ecosystem,
because the main part of their diet wasn't grain at all - it was locusts.
Without sparrows to keep them in check, the locust population went haywire, leading to
vast swarms the blotted out the sky and devoured everything in their wake.
The nation was plunged into a famine that lasted three years, and by the time it passed,
over 30 million people had died from starvation.
Once upon a time in India
The Enfield was a front-loading rifle used by the British Empire in the 1850's.
Bullets for the gun came in paper cartridges that soldiers had to tear the top off with
their teeth before loading.
The cartridges themselves were greased with pig and cow lard.
This caused a major problem with the Indian soldiers serving in the British colonial forces,
because pigs and cows were off limits according to their religions.
If they consumed products from these animals, it would make them unclean.
Rumors spread that the English planned to convert India to Christianity by making them
impure, igniting years of festering disdain for the colonial government.
Huge groups of soldiers rebelled against English rule, and a full-blown civil war ignited,
which lasted for months.
Even though England technically won, the native Indian culture reasserted itself, leading
to stronger national character that eventually lead to their independence.
More proof of the power of bacon.
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